If It Were Any More Real, It'd Be Science Fiction..

Regarding a popular horror/sci-fi trope:

You know, any supernatural creature that attempts to attack me "within my mind" is straight f*cked. Those clowns have no idea what a shit show it is in there; what horrible, evil nonsense my electrified jellymeat has to process and digest on the daily.

Have fun getting locked inside a psychic funhouse made of beans, baseball statistics, occult drivel, forgotten song lyrics and trauma, you dumbass ghost creature. You'll be stuck in this hideous meatsack just like I am, and you'll hate every second of it.

Come get some. 

And All Around Me, A Voice Was Calling..

With apologies to Woody Guthrie, who remains one of my heroes, this land is not your land or my land. She was never ours to conquer, nor some sort of divine gift, bequeathed by God, for the lives brutally extinguished in the shameful, bloody mess of colonization. 

You see, self-evident truths, the ones we purportedly hold firmly in our American hearts, are not so self-evident when the civilization we uphold has been built upon blood and bones on the land of ancient, already-existing peoples. Take a deep breath and read it again, without needing to get defensive. Let us first tell this mournful truth before we take a victory lap or gather to celebrate, and let us have the courage to examine these myths much deeper.

Liberty for all. It's a beautiful concept that is merely a punchline when my country, the United States of America, continues to lead the western world in mass incarcerations. This is a place of denial and a place of unspeakable violence. This is a place where traffic stops still end in far too many murders. This place, that you claim to be Holy Ground, is the place where dozens of immigrants are found dead in abandoned trucks, and where even Independence Day celebrations culminate in hysteria and death. 

How can God Bless America if she oppresses her people, like she has done for centuries? An America that provides freedom for the precious few but denies the humanity of its most vulnerable citizens. We were founded in violence and denial and these things remain deeply embedded in our DNA, evident in every new story; so numerous we grow apathetic, so commonplace that very few of us seem to remember that THIS IS NOT NORMAL.

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I remember some years back, hiking on Chemehuevi and Mojave land on the outskirts of Joshua Tree. I remember feeling the sacred vibration as my feet touched the ground. I was surrounded by Ocotillo and Mariposa Lillies, the kind that grow in unforgiving climates and remain as a testament to a natural world teeming with something bigger than any human being can ponder. This Earth, this Country, is their home. 

And Joshua Tree isn't unique. This land belongs to the wildflowers - the lupines and the columbines, the bluebells and the larkspurs, the poppies and the yarrows. This land belongs to the redwoods and aspens, the junipers and ponderosa pines, the descendents of even older species who hold precious secrets, who remember. This land belongs to the towering Rocky Mountains - so old we can barely fathom their millions and millions of years of existence. 

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Nationalism tells us we have some God-given and sanctioned right to strip lands from the peoples who cultivated them. Nationalism says God has blessed us, in particular, and above others, because of a document forged in half-truths and dripping with exclusion and cruelty. Nationalism holds power above reverence, absolutes instead of mystery. Nationalism requires loyalty and pledges instead of honest reflection and critique and it perpetuates violence in a land already steeped in it.

If I love this land, and I do, I must care for her. If I love this country, and I do, I must love her people. If I revere freedom, I must require it for all, no exceptions. 

As much as I want to believe in the Church of Woody, I cannot. This is not our land, yours or mine, but she is our home. And we have much to lament, much to make right, before I hold up the sparklers, throw the hot dogs on the grill and celebrate the myth of how chosen and star-spangled awesome we are. 

It's The Howling Nothingness

We often say things like "the person who gunned down innocent bystanders at (name Any recent event) was mentally ill" because we're simply not comfortable or emotionally equipped to deal with the truth. 

Sit these shooters down with some psychiatrist or clinical therapist, and more than likely, you won't get a diagnosis of a personality disorder, or PTSD, or schizoaffective. You likely won't even get the DSM's flavor of "psychopathy" or "sociopathy." You'll likely get nothing even remotely remarkable, except maybe what Stephen King calls a "howling nothingness" behind their eyes, a demonic slyness hidden deep beneath layer after layer of ideological justifications and defense mechanisms; a willful ignorance of any metric of kindness, decency or compassion.

Stop stigmatizing those who struggle with their mental health by conflating them with monsters. Some things are what they are. These people aren't mentally ill, they're evil. 

"I Don't Like Kids.."

Hi. Friendly reminder that the oft-repeated online statement/sentiment of “I don’t like kids” should elicit the same revulsion and indignation as the statement “I don’t like gays” or “I don’t like black people.” 

Children are the most routinely marginalized and oppressed group of people on the planet; utterly powerless to defend themselves against a myriad of cruel, dangerous and traumatic things. When you say “I don’t like kids,” you’re normalizing that marginalization and that oppression and proving yourself to be one more person children can't look to to keep them safe. 

Stop doing it. You don't have to have kids. It's not a good choice for many and a completely valid decision to choose to not be a parent for a vast number of people. But stop hating the most vulnerable among us. Please, be better.

Under The Lying Stone, Water Does Not Flow..

War is never a good thing, which might be such an understatement that it borders on being criminally fatuous or at least flirts with hyperbolic idiocy, but you have to give credit to many of the kings and queens of the past. When their armies went to war, they often led them, and not from the command center of an ivory tower or from a secure bunker in a secret locale. People like Henry the Vth were horrifically maimed by arrows that tore into their body on the battlefield. They fought against their enemies, often in hand-to-hand combat, right alongside their knights.

I guess that's why Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky resonates so strongly with so many people. If you know me, you know damn well just how opposed I am to turning any politician into a hero or cult figure, but there's something that speaks to us about a modern leader who eschews the suit and tie in favor of a combat jacket. I have no idea if he's helped dig a trench or even fired a rifle, but he's still there, on the frontlines, still present among his people in the midst of a brutal and horrific war. 

Let's see the next President of Prime Minister to declare a war have the courage to follow his example. 

Down On The Dopamine Farm - Magick Lesson, #1: Culture Is Not Your Friend

Pro-Tip: Learn to disentangle yourself from the failed, degenerating quagmire of consensus reality. Free your mind from the puerile personality cults of charismatic, sinister figures who lust for likes in an ever-deadening attention economy. Learn to make your own way, create your own path and let no one else do your thinking, speaking, loving or living for you. 

Without living your own life and declaring your own Will and Purpose, you will continue to be mired in the illusory events of the cultural echo chamber, and your own hopes, fears and limitations will be defined by the leaders of this cultural wasteland; subject to their whims and the nauseating winds of cultural change.

You must become Regent of your own life and Master of your own Will if you are to stand any chance of breaking this hypnotic spell. Self-definition and self-determination beats any dogma available in either meatspace or the virtual dopamine farm. Learn to see within yourself. Seek and See what is real, eternal, unchanging; and you will become impervious to any plot or conspiracy that is not your own. 

Then, and only then, you can begin The Great Work of becoming the very treasure you seek. 

We All Want To Be Forgiven..

Without descending into a predictable screed regarding the myriad of ways that social media can be poisonous trash, I'd like to concentrate on a particularly pernicious sentiment I see floating around the on the topic of forgiveness in the social media sphere:

I see a whole lot of "you don't HAVE to forgive in order to heal" and, also: "you don't EVER have to accept an apology from someone who has done you wrong, fuck them!" 

On the surface, these ideas make sense. After all, we seem to be much more interested in ourselves as victims than as potential perpetrators, and the good old fundamental attribution error makes it rather easy for us to turn anyone who wrongs us into some kind of maniacal tyrant (much in the same way that everyone's exes seem to be "textbook narcissists), as opposed to a typically nice but occasionally flawed person who, generally speaking, only does wrong out of fear or error (like ourselves). 

That being said, perhaps, in the spirit of honest evaluation, we can take a look at the other side of the coin. If you've screwed up, and you're trying to make amends, remember that even your most sincere apologies and heartfelt attempts at reconciliation or restitution essentially only put the ball in *their* court, nothing more. You don't have to sit around in utter agony hoping against hope that you'll somehow be forgiven for your misdeeds. Nobody has that kind of power over you unless you give it willingly. You can be understanding, and you can try to avoid bitterness, but don't think for a second that you can't start to be a better person *right now* just because the people you've wronged aren't interested in accepting your apology. Your conduct is your own, and it is yours to own, and contingent upon nothing else.

You don't have to put your life on hold in order to torture yourself; as a matter of fact, if you do take that ill-advised approach, you might begin to develop toxic anger toward the very recipients of your intended apology! Letting this kind of simmering guilt and shame turn toxic and shove you deeper into self-loathing and depression is a horrible solution to the problem at hand. You simply aren't bound to the person (the old you, if you will) you're trying to heal and no longer embody, just because those you've wronged can't or won't forgive you. It may be even harder to accept the idea that their reasons may well be perfectly understandable and even justified. You might not want to hear that, but it doesn't make it any less true. 

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I also want to say this: Don't let it stop you. Doing the right thing is always a worthy endeavor. Seek forgiveness. Make restitutions, if possible. Then move on, accepting the consequences of the past, and try your hardest to be someone different, someone better, someone capable of learning and growing and putting those lessons you've learned into action. That's what is truly owed - both to yourself, and to everyone else.